`zarr.core.group.Group` does not allow to access nested groups using file path-like syntax (?)

[aladinor]

Zarr version

v3.0

Numcodecs version

v0.15

Python Version

3.11

Operating System

Linux

Installation

conda

Description

Hi everyone,

Working on #9960 issue on Xarray, I discovered that the new Zarr python version does not allow access to group members using file path-like syntax.

Steps to reproduce

This is an MCVE:

import xarray
import xarray.testing as xt
import numpy as np
import zarr


if __name__ == "__main__":
    ds_a = xarray.Dataset({
      "A": (("x", "y"), np.ones((128, 256))),
    })
    ds_b = xarray.Dataset({
        "B": (("y", "x"), np.ones((256, 128)) * 2)
    })
    ds_c = xarray.Dataset({
        "G": (("x", "y"), np.zeros((128, 256)))
    })
    ds_rt = xarray.Dataset({
        "z": (("x", "y"), np.zeros((128, 256))),
        "w": (("x"), np.random.rand(128))
    })

    dt = xarray.DataTree.from_dict(
        {
            "/": ds_rt,
            "/a": ds_a,
            "/b": ds_b,
            "/c/d": ds_c
        }
    )
    path = "testv3_dt.zarr"
    dt.to_zarr(path, compute=True, mode="w")

The group paths in this datatree are ['/', '/c', '/c/d', '/b', '/a']. However, when opening the zarr store back it returns None when trying to get any of these paths

kwargs = {'mode': 'r', 'path': '/', 'storage_options': None, 'synchronizer': None, 'zarr_format': None}
store = zarr.open_consolidated(path, **kwargs)
print(store.get("/a"))
None

Digging a little bit more, I found out that we can get the path for each group in zarr-python v3 using the store.members() method as follows and this will allow us to get the groups within the zarr store.

print([path for path, _ in store.members()])
['a', 'b', 'w', 'c', 'z']

Now, we can access the nested groups using these results

print(store.get("a"))
<Group file://testv3_dt.zarr/a>

Shall zarr-pyhton v3 groups support file path-like syntax to access groups?

Another thing that I noticed is that datasets stored at the root level (ds_rt that contains z and w dataArrays) are not represented as a group (root group "/") but instead represented as zarr Arrays.

print(store.get("z"))
<Array file://testv3_dt.zarr/z shape=(128, 256) dtype=float64>

How could we access the root group (store.get("/")) instead of directly the arrays (store.get("z"))?

Additional output

The Zarr python v2 used return a <class 'zarr.hierarchy.Group'> which allowed us to access nested groups using file path-like syntax.

## this part of the code was executed using zarr-python v2
kwargs = {'mode': 'r', 'path': '/', 'storage_options': None, 'synchronizer': None}
store = zarr.open_consolidated(path, **kwargs)

print(store.get("/"))
<zarr.hierarchy.Group '/' read-only>

print(store.get("/a"))
<zarr.hierarchy.Group '/a' read-only>

[jhamman]

Thanks @aladinor for looking into this. I opened pydata/xarray#9984 to track the datatree+zarr3 integration.

I thought we had fixed the leading slash issue here in zarr so I'm wondering if that is still the cause here or if there is something else going on.

[d-v-b]

Thanks for this report, I think there are few things to unpack here:

Shall zarr-pyhton v3 groups support file path-like syntax to access groups?

Definitely. As @jhamman notes some of the weirdness you observed might come from zarr-python v3 using relative paths for the names of arrays and groups (e.g., "a"), vs the use of an absolute path (e.g., "/a"). We should accept both of these as valid inputs for group.get, and I can look into why this isn't working today.

How could we access the root group (store.get("/")) instead of directly the arrays (store.get("z"))?

Can you explain why this is needed? In your example, store is the root group. You already have a reference to it. Why do you need x.get('/') to return the same group as x?

[aladinor]

Thanks, @jhamman and @d-v-b for your prompt reply.

Can you explain why this is needed? In your example, store is the root group. You already have a reference to it. Why do you need x.get('/') to return the same group as x?

We have a datatree that looks like this:

<xarray.DataTree>
Group: /
│   Dimensions:  (x: 128, y: 256)
│   Dimensions without coordinates: x, y
│   Data variables:
│       z        (x, y) float64 262kB 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 ... 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
│       w        (x) float64 1kB 0.01734 0.8962 0.6293 ... 0.2805 0.2753 0.2004
├── Group: /a
│       Dimensions:  (x: 128, y: 256)
│       Dimensions without coordinates: x, y
│       Data variables:
│           A        (x, y) float64 262kB 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 ... 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
├── Group: /b
│       Dimensions:  (y: 256, x: 128)
│       Dimensions without coordinates: y, x
│       Data variables:
│           B        (y, x) float64 262kB 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 ... 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0
└── Group: /c
    └── Group: /c/d
            Dimensions:  (x: 128, y: 256)
            Dimensions without coordinates: x, y
            Data variables:
                G        (x, y) float64 262kB 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 ... 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

I guess it is because that was the way we handled it in zarr v2. We had a hierarchical structure and then we query all groups including the root group. However, I might need to recheck how to get the root-level dataset (ds_rt).

Group: /
│   Dimensions:  (x: 128, y: 256)
│   Dimensions without coordinates: x, y
│   Data variables:
│       z        (x, y) float64 262kB 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 ... 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
│       w        (x) float64 1kB 0.01734 0.8962 0.6293 ... 0.2805 0.2753 0.2004

I am still not sure how to get it from the store. Maybe, because the store is itself the root group (?).

[d-v-b]

open_consolidated returns a group. in your first example, the variable you bound to "store" is in fact a zarr group (the root group). So you already have a reference to it.

[aladinor]

Thanks @d-v-b for your explanation. However, I think I found out a more technical explanation for this behaviour. When opening a datatree using xarray we need to iterate over all nested groups within the hierarchical structure, including the root group as shown here:

https://github.com/pydata/xarray/blob/1c7ee65d560fa3067dc4424c672393839fa972d3/xarray/backends/zarr.py#L661C8-L675C11

Then, each nested group can be accessed from the "store" group using the .get() method.

https://github.com/pydata/xarray/blob/1c7ee65d560fa3067dc4424c672393839fa972d3/xarray/backends/zarr.py#L664

Thus, my question is, how can we get the root group using the .get() method?

[d-v-b]

I don't think we necessarily want Group.get() to return a copy of itself. So I would recommend special-casing the root group in your iteration. e.g.,

root= {'/': zarr_group}
members = dict(zarr_group.members())
tree =  root | members

[aladinor]

@d-v-b thanks for your suggestions. We need to do some refactoring, but it makes sense to me. We need to wait for absolute paths before implementing this.